American Literature I

American Literature I

Recommended Grade Level: 11 - 12

This course is a survey in American literature from the beginnings through 1865. The syllabus is therefore designed to introduce you to a variety of different writers—such as Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson—and help you develop a sense of how literature and culture changed from the colonial period through the early national period and the antebellum. In doing so, we will also explore the different forms popular in these periods, from sermons and essays to short stories, poems, and novels. You will learn to appreciate the diction, imagery, meter, irony, dialogue, and metaphor used by several authors and poets.